


Her Tenderness

by fannishliss



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-23
Updated: 2011-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 16:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  The Doctor hurts his hand and Rose helps him take care of it, aka Nine!Hand!Porn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Tenderness

**title: Her Tenderness**  
author: [](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/profile)[**fannishliss**](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/)   
pairing: Nine/Rose  
rating: G  
spoilers: none  
Length: 1682 words  
disclaimer:  I do not own these characters, just borrowing.  
Summary:  The Doctor hurts his hand and Rose helps him take care of it, aka Nine!Hand!Porn.  
Notes:  this will be my first Doctor Who fic, so please let me know if you like it. Inspired by a comment from [](http://ladyprydian.livejournal.com/profile)[**ladyprydian**](http://ladyprydian.livejournal.com/)  -- hope you enjoy it!

>====>

"Agh!"  the Doctor yelled in disgust, then let out a groan of pain through gritted teeth.

Rose looked down in alarm from her post on the grating.  She could dimly see below her in the blue liminal light, the Doctor clutching his right hand fiercely in his left. "Are you okay?" she said.

"No, I'm not bloody okay.  A sharp bit of Tardis just about ran through my hand!"

He sounded tired, angry and embarrassed.  After another harrowing adventure, Rose had gone off to sleep, leaving the Doctor to make what he claimed were some minor adjustments to the Tardis. He was still working when she came wandering through again some ten hours later, thinking about breakfast.

She had pulled out her yoga mat (not that she did yoga, but that damn grating was so uncomfortable) and taken up her position on the grating near a variety of spanners, components, and whatnots, ready to hand them down to him at his command, but all she'd heard from below had been banging and the occasional effortful grunt.   She'd been curled up on the mat, peering down into the shadows, watching him work, when  the Doctor had shouted out in pain.  

"Come on out of there, then, let's see to it,"  Rose coaxed. 

The Doctor came up straightaway, cursing in Gallifreyan as he climbed up out of the hatchway, his brow wrinkled down in pain. He was forced to let go of his injured hand to pull himself out.  The deep puncture wound welled up with alien blood, strangely dark and slightly orange.

"Keep pressure on it," she said, wishing she had a clean cloth. 

He rolled his eyes angrily as he hoisted himself out and struggled to his feet, getting a tight grip on his right hand with his left again.

In sick fascination, Rose watched a single droplet of blood trickle down the Doctor's pinky finger; it hung there, elongated, fell, and spattered on the grating.

"Can I come with you to the infirmary?  It's always awkward bandaging your own hand,"  she said gently.

"That it is," he agreed, sighing. His brow relaxed slightly, and Rose caught that look in his eyes she saw every so often, relief that someone was there to help him when he needed it.

The Tardis brought the infirmary near the console room and soon the Doctor was standing at the sink, bathing his cut hand in running water.  The swirl of blood down the sink was dismaying to Rose. Thinking that the Doctor really needed a first aid kit in the console room, she pulled out some clean towels and the sterile gauze, familiar with the layout of supplies in the infirmary from so many times of the Doctor binding up her own wounds.

Rose dried the Doctor's hands with a clean towel, blood staining the white cloth an odd, terra cotta color.  She pressed a thick gauze pad against the deep puncture in the palm of his right hand and watched as it immediately soaked through with blood, then she wound a long piece of gauze around and around the injury, snugly but not too tight, so he could let go of it and relax a little.

The Doctor breathed out as he dropped his left hand, still holding out the injured hand for Rose to tend.

"Do you want to sonic it or something?"  she asked. 

"Yeah, it's 13E, stops surface bacteria getting in the wound," the Doctor said, so Rose drew the sonic out of its customary pocket, adjusting it as the Doctor directed.  She held the beam for a few seconds, sonicking the wound through the gauze, and stopped when the Doctor nodded.

"Now, 22A, it'll stimulate my tissues to begin closing up."  The Doctor grimaced, pulling his lips back from his teeth uncomfortably as Rose activated the beam.

"Is that okay?"  Rose asked as the Doctor hissed.

"Yeah, but it aches when the nerves regrow like that,"  the Doctor said.

Rose held the beam, knowing better than to stop before he said.  He seemed to be holding his breath.  

"Okay," he said, and she stopped the beam. 

He looked so vulnerable for a second as he caught his breath, despite all the terrible things Rose knew he had survived -- or perhaps because of them. 

"How does it feel now?"  she asked.

"It still aches, ach,"  the Doctor said, moving his fingers gingerly.

"May I?"  Rose asked, motioning towards his hand.

"What?" the Doctor said, suspiciously.

"Hand massage. I worked for Shareen's aunt at her manicure place one summer." 

The Doctor looked at Rose, skepticism fairly pouring from his cold blue eyes. 

"Sorry, nah, it's a stupid idea,"  Rose mumbled, turning away.

"No, it isn't.  Please," the Doctor relented.  "You can take the gauze off now, the bleeding's stopped."

Rose wasn't surprised when she unwrapped the gauze and removed the blood-soaked pad to see that the wound had closed, pink and shiny with new scar tissue. 

"But it still hurts?"  she asked.

"Yeah, the nerve impulse from the injury lingers on, even though the sonic and my physiology have dealt with the actual damage."

"Phantom pain," Rose murmured.

"Yeah," the Doctor said.  "Time Lord thing -- injury leaves a lasting temporal impression on the Time Lord brain.  To keep us on our toes."

Rose had her doubts about Time Lords and their genetic tampering, if being in pain longer than necessary was considered a good idea.

Now it was Rose's turn to look skeptical.  "Do you want a bit of hand massage or what." 

"I think it's precisely what's called for," the Doctor said gently.

"Okay then," Rose said, and picked up the Doctor's right hand. 

She started with the thumb.  The Doctor had long, elegant hands.  His thumb was tapered, the nail blunt but shiny and nicely shaped, not torn or bitten.  His dark, no-nonsense clothes and close-cropped hair were casual if a little severe, but he was always neatly groomed with his cleanly shaven jaw and well-tended hands.

Rose massaged the thumb and each finger in turn, soothing away the tightness she found in his hard-working hands, rotating each joint until the fingers were pliant and loose.  She then turned to the palm, delicately working her way around the injury. 

She glanced up to see if she was hurting him at all, and his eyes were closed, his strong features calm and composed.  As she stared up at him, her heart pounded with a surge of emotion, gratitude that she'd helped him find a moment of peace. He suddenly opened his eyes, catching her staring.  He smiled a little at her blush, and she looked away.  She was still holding his hand in both of hers.

"You can do the palm if you like, it's sufficiently healed," he said. 

Making no answer, she lightly compressed the strong muscles of the palm of his hand.  She was surprised to find that though his hand had been cold as usual when she started out, the temperature had risen as she massaged it and was now pleasantly cool. 

As she massaged his palm, she kept her touch gentle and soothing around the newly healed wound.  She found it hard to reconcile the blood and pain he'd been in with the pink scar on his hand.  She couldn't help an irrational fear that it would tear open again under the pressure of her fingers.   This little injury, easily mended, was the least of all the terrible things the Doctor had suffered, but it hurt to think of how much he had been through alone. Working out the tension in his hands was something, but she wished she could do so much more for the Doctor; she wished she could show the gruff, mercurial man how deeply she cared for him, despite his frequent harshness.

Impulsively, she brought his hand up and pressed her lips to the wound in a chaste kiss.  The rest of his hand was cool, but the scarred bit was ice cold.  She gasped and pulled back, her eyes darting up to meet his.  Startled, he had no chance to veil the emotions she read so easily there:  gratitude, fondness, the inevitable sorrow he was never without -- but something more. If he'd been human, she'd have thought it was hunger.

Rose couldn't look away -- his cool hand warming in hers, her lips tingling from their brush against the icy wound, his gaze seeming to plead with her for something more, some deeper connection.  Her heart was pounding now, her body frozen in the moment. Mustering all her courage she leaned forward a hair's breadth, never breaking his gaze.   She held on to his hand, praying with all her heart that he could feel how much she cared for him, how she'd care for him forever, if he'd let her. 

She hardly dared breathe, for fear she'd break the spell.  If he ran away now, she felt like her heart would break.

She felt a tremor run through him as though he thought to pull away, but she refused to let go.

"Rose," he said, so many warring emotions flickering through his eyes, thickening his voice.

"Doctor," she replied, simple and accepting.

Amazingly, almost miraculously, the hand in hers, instead of pulling away, seemed to rise of its own accord toward her face.  She felt her own hands carrying his to the side of her face, where he tenderly caressed her cheek.

A tear broke from her eyes; she didn't even know she was nearly crying. 

"Doctor," she repeated, trying to push every emotion she felt into that one all-important word.  It wasn't even his name, but it was all she had.

"Rose," he said again, and his eyes slipped shut as his fingers reached her temple.

As though in a dream she felt an image slip to the front of her consciousness: a door, and on the other side, the Doctor stood patiently, hand resting on the jamb, waiting to be let in. 

_Rose?_

She pressed his gentle fingers against her temple, and joyfully threw open the door. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
